The invention relates to an apparatus for the segregation of worn-out cleaning bodies made of resiliently deformable material such as rubber or plastic which are carried in the cooling fluid circuit of a heat exchanger.
The cleaning bodies, usually foam rubber balls, are carried in the cooling fluid circuit, usually the cooling water circuit, and serve for the cleaning of the heat exchanger. To achieve a cleansing action, the cleaning bodies must be larger than the pipe being cleaned. Since the cleaning bodies become worn, the worn-out ones must be regularly separated from the others and replaced with new ones.
An apparatus is known from German Pat. No. 2,254,677 which removes the worn cleaning bodies within the cooling water circuit. The sorting is performed automatically, while in other apparatus of this kind (see for example the publication, "Brennstoff, Warme, Kraft," Vol. 10, No. 3, p. 123, which is cited in this patent as the state of the art), the removal of the worn-out cleaning bodies is still performed manually by means of a perforated sieve, which is a very tedious operation.
However, the automatically operating system known through the above-named patent still has disadvantages. One particularly great disadvantage is that always only some of the worn cleaning bodies are removed from the cool liquid, while some are not. Also, no measure are provided for replacing the removed worn cleaning bodies with new cleaning bodies, so that in the course of time the cooling fluid becomes short of cleaning bodies. The system must therefore be examined at regular intervals to determine whether it contains enough cleaning bodies and, if need be, to put new cleaning bodies into the coolant circuit. Continuous operation over longer periods of time, therefore, appears to be impossible.
It is the object of the invention to improve an apparatus of the kind mentioned above such that all of the cleaning bodies present in the coolant circuit can be examined for degree of wear and rejected cleaning bodies can be constantly replaced with new ones as needed.